The Princess Problem: Guiding Our Girls through the Princess-Obsessed Years

Author

PART

ONE

The Pleasures and Problems of Princess Culture—and a Solution

Introduction

I work at my computer in jeans and a sweater, wearing glasses and no makeup, as usual. My three-year-old son playfully sticks hair clips into my long, dark brown hair, willy-nilly. The look, I’m sure, is haphazard.

He stops to admire his work and says, Mommy, you’re pretty.

I smile and hug him tightly. Thank you, Theo!

Pressing closer to me, he says, I love you, Mommy. You’re my princess.

I look nothing like a princess. But at preschool, Theo has seen that girls love dressing up as princesses. The girls in his class play often with princess toys, draw princess pictures, and love being called princess.

How could he avoid it? It’s a cultural norm.

***

Three weeks later, I am impeccably dressed in a gorgeous silvery-blue gown with gold trim. Its skirt is full and flattering, thanks to the crinoline I wear beneath it. My upswept blond wig perfectly covers my dark hair. My eyeglasses are in their case. Now I wear contacts, and my eyelashes are long and curled. Having spent more than an hour dressing and applying makeup, I look stunning.

A woman ushers me into her living room. Guests snack on party food, chat, and play. Suddenly, a small voice cries, It’s Cinderella! It’s Cinderella! The children flock to me. Using my best manners, I smile and reach out to each child, greeting them by taking their hands in mine. I hope none of them get food on my silver evening gloves.

From among the twelve children, ages two to eleven, I locate the four-year-old birthday girl; she wears a Disney-brand Cinderella dress and party hat. Giving her a hug, I gently smile and say, I am so pleased that I could attend your party. I inflect my words like a proper princess.

THE AUTHOR AS CINDERELLA

The birthday girl smiles shyly but does not speak. She is too awestruck.

I take her hand and lead her to the front of the room. Her elderly relatives beam at me with palpable affection. Oh, Cinderella! they call. Hi! I pause to smile and curtsy at them, and their eyes sparkle, perhaps with nostalgia. Isn’t she beautiful, one says.

During the party, I mingle with the children, read them fairy tales, paint their faces, and make them balloon animals. I enjoy the attention and relish the children’s delight.

I tell the children that I have enough time to make each of them a second balloon animal, and the birthday girl asks me to make her a sword. Suddenly, everybody wants one. I whisper conspiratorially to a group of girls that they look very strong. I really want you to fight those boys, I say. I’m certain you could beat them in a sword fight. They grin wickedly. One says, Yeah, I think we could! and off they run.

The eleven-year-old girl hovers as I work. You know, she offers, I think Cinderella does a lot more things now than she did when I was a little kid. I don’t remember Cinderella doing so many things.

I smile and reply, Well, of course! It’s important for all of us to continue to grow and learn new things. Even me. She nods, then asks if I can show her how to make a balloon animal. I help her practice a few simple twists.

When I catch a glimpse of a clock, I realize that I am short on time. I have only forty-five minutes left in which to excuse myself, transform into Sleeping Beauty, drive to another party, and park a few blocks away from the next birthday girl’s home. I’m obliged to ensure the children don’t see a storybook princess arrive in a rundown car.

As I leave, the birthday girl’s parents thank me for my performance. Her mom comments, I have never seen a group of kids sit still that long and listen! The dad shakes my hand and gives me a twenty-five-dollar tip. I am grateful. As I later tell my colleagues at Salem State University where I teach, this money will help fund my field research in a few weeks at Walt Disney World, where I plan to see the Disney brand of princess culture in action. Rushing out into the cold winter air, I hurry on my way, careful not to lose a slipper.

***

I know why preschool girls love to play princess. Dressing up in costume is a pleasure. What fun to transform into a glamorous beauty, to be adulated, to be treated as royalty! And during the months I spent as a princess performer, I found it to be a fun source of extra income, too.

That wasn’t the main reason I worked as a princess performer, though—far from it. As a professor who studies and writes about girls’ media culture, I’ve spent the last three years studying the rise of princess culture from multiple angles. Working at children’s birthday parties was a research opportunity, a chance to make a first-person journey into princess culture. By transforming myself into storybook princesses—as Cinderella, Belle, the Little Mermaid, Rapunzel, Aladdin’s princess (I was playing generic princesses, not the Disney versions), and Sleeping Beauty—I gained a unique perspective on princess culture in young girls’ lives. For a couple of hours every weekend, I was in the eye of the storm.

I also interviewed more than fifty parents about their perspectives on princess culture, listening with care to what they had to say. (Note: In this book, the names of the parents I interviewed—and their children’s names—have been changed.) I heard all about the things they like about princess culture, and also about the aspects of princess culture that worry them. On the one hand, many moms have nostalgia for the princesses of their own childhoods, and compared with other popular girls’ toys and media, like the edgy Monster High dolls, parents see princesses as innocent and safe.

But at the same time, now that princess culture has become a dominant force in little girls’ lives across the United States, moms and dads alike have concerns. They are concerned about the way princess culture stereotypes girls’ behaviors and interests. They are concerned about its unhealthy emphasis on romance and the way its focus on physical beauty might affect girls’ body images and self-esteem. They also feel concerned about the deficiencies in princess culture’s racial diversity and race representation, which just aren’t in sync with the realities of modern life in the United States.

Since princess culture is here to stay—and, with it, these problems alongside the fun—I want to offer some solutions: tips that thoughtful parents can easily implement in their everyday lives to raise resilient, media-savvy girls. To this end, I reviewed dozens of scholarly studies to learn more about the issues the parents I interviewed raised. I spoke with experts, too—psychologists, educators, media-literacy experts, and girl empowerment advocates. The best of these studies and conversations are interspersed throughout The Princess Problem: Guiding Our Girls through the Princess-Obsessed Years.

In the process, I developed a better understanding of the ways in which little girls across the nation become enamored with princess toys, princess movies, and princess play clothes. Disney Princess is the number-one brand for licensed entertainment merchandise in the United States and Canada, selling $1.52 billion in merchandise in 2012 and besting runners-up Star Wars ($1.46 billion) and Hello Kitty ($1.08 billion) for the top spot. No wonder, then, that Disney continues to expand its Princess line and diversify other elements of its portfolio with princesses, as well. Minnie Mouse is available in princess varieties, and late in 2012, Disney Junior released Sofia the First, a television cartoon for girls ages two to seven about a little girl who suddenly becomes royalty when her mother marries a king. Since then, Sofia—which is considered separate from the Disney Princess line—has been a marketing bonanza for Disney Junior.

Although countless little girls are buying into the princess identity, not all of their parents are on board. While many loving parents enjoy spoiling their little princesses every year, another crop of new parents is stunned by how pervasive princess marketing is. In some cases, they are also stunned by the extremity of their daughters’ princess obsessions—realizing too late that once princess is introduced to their toddlers, life can quickly become all princess, all the time.

Even parents whose little girls aren’t fully obsessed with princesses are often ambivalent about princess culture—that aspect of children’s popular culture that makes princess a central part of girls’ identities and lives and, in so doing, promotes old-fashioned ideas of what the ideal girl should be like, what she should do, and even whom she should love. They are concerned about what their daughters are learning from princess culture: the lessons they’re taking in about consumerism, about the beauty ideal, about gender stereotypes (including people’s roles within romantic relationships), and about racial stereotypes.

Experts agree that parents are right to be concerned. What young girls learn from the media about princesses also teaches them lessons about what it means to be a girl. Those lessons can, in turn, influence how they think about themselves as they grow up. What little girls learn from princess culture can shape their own identities and self-images—whether or not they embrace the idea that they, too, are princesses.

Faced with problems of this nature, many parents wonder: what is the solution? Short of improving princess culture itself—a feat that would require collective action for longer than our own children’s childhoods will last—how do we raise little girls who feel empowered to break free of the princess stereotypes and ideals surrounding them?

The Solution: Parents as Pop Culture Coaches

I have an answer, and it’s the central idea of this book. Every parent can guide their girls through the media world around them with what I’ve dubbed pop culture coaching. To become their daughters’ pop culture coaches, parents begin by reflecting on their own values—giving conscious thought to what they believe about various issues relevant to girls. Then, with these values in mind, parents coach their children to become media-literate individuals.

Media-literate people are able to think critically about all media—the contexts of their production and the messages they convey. As critical viewers, media-literate people are good at questioning what they see on-screen and can build resilience to the media’s negative aspects. Therefore, this is an important task for twenty-first-century parents. We must coach our children, guiding them to become critical viewers of media culture in general and of princess culture in particular.

The goal is not to persuade girls that princesses are bad or to de-princess them. Rather, it is to help girls reason through the problems with princesses and see that there are many other ways to be a girl—to help unfetter their imaginations and help them dream a multiplicity of dreams.

To this end, The Princess Problem offers parents clear instructions on handling four key areas of concern: the insidious marketing, the restrictive beauty ideal embodied by princesses, the gender stereotypes, and the racial stereotypes. Each chapter in Part Two of The Princess Problem begins by unpacking one of these four issues to help parents gain a comprehensive, informed view of the problem in question. Then, each chapter offers parents general strategies and specific recommendations they can implement with their kids.

Note that I’ve used a multifaceted approach in creating these recommendations. After all, I know how fun it can be to play princess. I don’t deny the appeal of this pleasure. (After one of my first Saturday mornings spent performing at children’s birthday parties, I came home and told my husband, This is such a great job for me!) So while I support girls in their princess interests, I also hold toy makers and marketers accountable for the problems in their films, products, and marketing tactics.

Using the pop culture coaching approach discussed in The Princess Problem, parents can help their children understand their family’s individual values and perspectives, while still being respectful of girls’ interests and princess pleasures. Teaching our children media-literacy skills now, in their preschool and early elementary years, is important. It equips them to question, resist, and negotiate the marketing strategies and the ideals presented by Disney and other producers. In today’s media-saturated world, the earlier children learn these skills, the better. They’ll use them their entire lives.

Note that while The Princess Problem is about young girls’ princess culture and often highlights the Disney Princess brand because it dominates the marketplace, the pop culture coaching principles in this book are applicable to other media products and properties, as well—princesses and beyond. These principles can also be used to help boys. In fact, some of the examples I offer will be based upon my own exchanges with my young son as we negotiate the positives and negatives of popular culture together. (See my website, RebeccaHains.com, for a parent-child discussion guide for each of the Disney Princess films, as well as discussion guides for pop culture coaching that go beyond princess culture.)

Today’s world is so media-saturated that becoming a savvy consumer of television, films, and other media texts can be empowering for anyone. With marketers expending more time and money on courting children to purchase their products than ever before, becoming media literate is especially important for our children. That’s why I’ve written this book—and why I hope you’ll find it useful.

CHAPTER ONE

The Problems with Princess Culture

Today’s parents are smart and thoughtful, and we are terrific at finding the information we need to do right by our kids. Thanks to the Internet, a world of information is at our fingertips. We can find the answers to just about any parenting challenge we face, whether big or small: Childhood illnesses. Toy safety. Car seat installation. Birthday party themes. The age-appropriateness of specific movies. Avoiding BPA. Creative ideas for The Elf on the Shelf. Healthy recipes.

But one parenting challenge has been flummoxing even the most resourceful parents: how to deal with the way pretty, pink princess culture has taken over girlhood. In the past decade, princess toys have become the most popular item for girls. As we’ve said, Disney Princess is the number-one licensed entertainment line in the United States and Canada, and there are countless additional princess toys beyond that brand. This means that princess culture is an unavoidable part of modern girlhood. Princess is everywhere.

Unfortunately, with princess culture’s exceptional rise, preschool boys and girls have come to experience very different childhoods. Boys’ toys feature superheroes, trains, cars, building sets, and a range of colors. Girls’ toys, swathed in an endless sea of pink and purple, are dominated by princesses. In consequence, boys grow up in an active, rough-and-tumble, building-oriented world, while girls grow up in a passive, frilly, image- and appearance-oriented world. Girls get the short end of the stick. They are separate and unequal.

Making matters worse, the stories told about princesses in the media—which are so beloved by little girls—are incredibly limiting. Scholars and critics have carefully analyzed the stories told about princesses, and a laundry list of concerns has emerged:

They’re too skinny.

They’re too buxom.

They’re too weak.

They’re too helpless.

They’re too often white.

In other words, princess movies by studios, including but not limited to Disney, teach girls that they should be pretty and passive; and for the most part, the characters they depict lack racial and cultural diversity. This is unacceptable to modern parents, who are working to raise strong, empowered girls of many diverse backgrounds.

In this cultural context, the wildfire success of anything critical of princesses is really telling. Hordes of parents want more than just princesses for their daughters.

On the social-media front, a humorous approach reigns. Nearly every month, a new image or video making fun of princess culture goes viral. Saturday Night Live’s skit The Real Housewives of Disney hilariously satirized what the princesses’ lives would be like after their happily ever afters. (Hint: not so great.)

The Second City Network, a sketch comedy troupe from Chicago and Toronto whose alumni include Stephen Colbert and Tina Fey, released a series of YouTube videos called Advice from a Cartoon Princess, full of wonderful life lessons for young girls presented by comedians dressed in princess attire—like the Little Mermaid offering retrograde tips including, Don’t ever talk to a man until he kisses you on the lips first. Then, as a woman, you’re allowed, and Never be comfortable in the body that you’re given.

And thanks to Pinterest and Facebook, cartoon images go viral constantly—like cartoonist Bill Walko’s What If Wonder Woman Was a Disney Princess, in which Wonder Woman—wearing a princess-style gown and carrying a blood-stained sword—tells a perplexed fairy godmother, prince, and two woodland creatures: Oh dear, I’m afraid I have already slain the dragon, defeated the evil queen, and saved the kingdom. But it is truly splendid you all offered to help!

Alongside the humor, more serious critiques of princess culture have gone viral, as well. For example, social media went ablaze with the release of Fallen Princesses, a series of somber photographs depicting fairy-tale characters in starkly realistic modern-day scenarios. (Photo gallery available at fallenprincesses.com.) Artist Dina Goldstein was inspired to create the series when her three-year-old daughter became a princess devotee.

Goldstein has explained on her website that after her daughter became interested in the Disney Princesses, I began to imagine Disney’s perfect princesses juxtaposed with real issues that were affecting women around me, such as illness, addiction, and self-image issues. According to her website, the series was born out of deep personal pain, when [Goldstein] raged against the ‘happily ever after’ motif’ that dominates girlhood.

The resulting images are jarring and compelling and often sad. For example, one photo finds Snow White and her prince in a suburban living room with four young children. Two of them are in Snow White’s arms while one pulls at her skirt, and a fourth child plays on the floor in the background. The prince is watching television with his feet up, and Snow White looks unamused. In another photo, an unconscious, middle-aged Belle is undergoing plastic surgery. One surgeon slices her skin open for an eye-lift, while another injects her lips with a needle full of collagen. Other portraits are equally grim: Ariel is trapped in an aquarium, Jasmine is in a Middle Eastern war zone, and a hairless Rapunzel is undergoing chemotherapy.

Once Fallen Princesses went viral online, it was covered by media outlets worldwide, including MSN, the New York Daily News, Yahoo! News, the New Zealand Herald, the Huffington Post, and the Daily Telegraph. Along the way, Jack David Zipes, PhD—a retired professor of German history at the University of Minnesota and renowned fairy-tale expert—argued about the series’ tremendous appeal.

He noted that Fallen Princesses comment critically on the Disney world and raise many questions about the lives women are expected to lead and the actual lives that they lead. [Goldstein’s] photos are not optimistic. Rather, they are subtle, comic, and grotesque images that undo classical fairy-tale narratives and expose some of the negative results that are rarely discussed in public. This is key to understanding why the photos became a sensation. They speak to the impossibility of princess culture’s promises to women and girls, which we rarely discuss. Romance is flawed. Beauty is short-lived. Life is difficult.

Fantasy, meet reality.

Consider, too, the immense popularity of articles critiquing princess culture in the New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor; the existence of well-read blogs like Princess Free Zone and Disney Princess Recovery, dedicated to pushing back against princess culture’s takeover of modern girlhood; and the bestseller status of Peggy Orenstein’s book Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture, whose success I’ll describe later. All have captured readers’ interest, sparking a ton of conversation.

For the past few years, I’ve been a strong voice in that conversation myself. I’ve written about princess culture on my own blog and the Christian Science Monitor’s blog, Modern Parenthood, chatting with countless parents about the issues by email and on social media. I’ve talked about princess culture in live interviews on Huffington Post Live, CBC Radio, and Fox & Friends. I’ve discussed it with journalists from the Boston Globe, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Cosmopolitan magazine. I’ve even been interviewed about princess culture for two documentary films—Girl Attitude: The Making of Girls and Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood & Corporate Power (second edition)—which are slated for release in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

And I’m here to tell you there’s nothing inherently wrong with princesses, pink and purple, sparkles, or frills. Princesses are pretty, and sparkles and frills are fun! Girls have been playing princesses for generations. But there is something wrong when that’s the main type of girlhood marketed to girls. Princesses should be one of a vast range of options for little girls. Compared with the choices boys have, preschool girls’ play choices have become exceedingly limited. As a result, parents are concerned about what girls are learning from princess culture—and as a media studies professor who specializes in the study of girls and media culture, I know they’re right to worry.

Even Disney has, in a roundabout way, admitted that princesses are not generally the healthiest option for little girls. When Disney Junior announced the impending release of its new television cartoon Sofia the First, the channel explained that the title character would be a little girl, rather than a teenager like those in the Walt Disney Studios princess films—and Disney execs promised that Sofia the First would be age-appropriate for preschoolers. The cartoon would feature not just plenty of pretty dresses and sparkly shoes, but also lessons relevant to little ones, such as the importance of getting along with siblings and how to be a kind and generous person.

The announcement caused savvy critics of girls’ princess culture to raise a collective eyebrow. For example, Orenstein was incredulous. She accused Disney of trying to have it both ways: claiming that their princess-themed feature films are harmless fun for young girls while also claiming that Sofia would address some of the problems found in princess-themed feature films. What a contradiction.

Unfortunately, solutions to the problems of princess culture have been hard to come by. So, in this book, I explore the major areas of concern with princess culture and then offer parents solutions to each of those problems:

1. The endless gender-segregated marketing.

2. The emphasis on appearance.

3. The regressive gender stereotypes.

4. The limited amount of race representation.

Let’s take a quick look at each one before turning to the solutions.

The Problem with Princess Marketing

Princesses are so heavily marketed that they’re inescapable. They’re featured on everything from furniture to clothing to food items, to such an extent that if marketers want to suggest that a product is for girls, all they have to do is slap a princess on it, color it pink, and call it a day.

Unfortunately, this excessive princess marketing is contributing to a broader problem—the division of boys and girls into separate and unequal spheres. In Chapter 3, I’ll go into more detail about why that has been a successful strategy for marketers (hint: it exploits a normal developmental phase), and why it’s such a problem for our kids.

But meanwhile, consider what my family and I witnessed at our local Stride Rite, the popular children’s shoe store. Stride Rite was selling sneakers for preschool boys featuring characters such as Spider-Man and Lightning McQueen from Disney’s Cars, and sneakers for preschool girls featuring characters such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Hello Kitty.

Signs in the store and promotional copy on the Stride Rite website encouraged boys to be active, energetic, and powerful—with light-up powers that are good for your little adventurer’s feet, no matter what kind of web he spins. The Cars shoes promised to help boys be as fast as the legendary Lightning McQueen.

Meanwhile, Stride Rite exhorted girls to be princesses who sparkle and shine with the cutest sneakers on the block. Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty sneakers promised to transport your little princess to a world of fantasy. There was not a word about girls using their sneakers to play actively or adventurously like the boys; it was all about appearance and princess dreams.

To parents who are working hard to raise active, empowered girls, this kind of marketing is incredibly frustrating. By implying that boys prefer physical play and girls prefer looking good, Stride Rite’s marketing strategies—like other companies’, for they are definitely not alone—were reinforcing the sex role biases that keep boys active and girls passive.

As author Colette Dowling has argued, these biases are at the root of what she calls the Frailty Myth. Boys learn to use their bodies in skilled ways, and this gives them a good sense of their physical capacities and limits, while girls hold themselves back from full, complete movement. Although it’s usually something girls are unaware of, they actually learn to hamper their movements, developing a ‘body timidity that increases with age.’

Absorbing this lesson has lifelong consequences for little girls, as Dowling explains in The Frailty Myth: Redefining the Physical Potential of Women and Girls. Some little girls defy marketers’ expectations, playing sports or collecting bugs in their princess dresses—but they are the exceptions to the rule. Ultimately, girls are dropping out of sports at two times the rate of boys. Studies show that this is in part because girls feel worried about how they look while exercising, when their focus should be on how well their bodies are working—not whether they look good. Combined with eschewing activities that might mess up their hair and makeup, all